GRIME

(Paperback)

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From addiction and familial dysfunction to gentrification and police brutality, GRIME examines harsh realities through an activist lens with a rare deftness of poetic form.

"Thea Matthews is the voice and protector of our generation. Brave poems like a universe that has decided to go forward with a third testament. Thea Matthews is our sacred underground; the only host of our ascension." -Tongo Eisen-Martin, author of Blood on the Fog

GRIME is the underbelly of the city and the dirt found in the human psyche. These poems explore the dichotomous gravity of despair and desire, apathy and protest, defeat and survival. They trace San Francisco's skyline to encapsulate being born and raised in a metropolis that has grown increasingly strange to its native citizens, even as it serves as a mnemonic for past trauma and death.

Part elegy, part call to resistance, GRIME chronicles Matthews' childhood growing up in the Tenderloin, amidst the glamour and allure of its drug-fueled street life and the squalor of its poverty and addiction, even as the poems veer off from the autobiographical into portraits and dramatic monologues, on the one hand, and experiments with traditional forms like ghazals and pantoums, on the other. The poems hold grit and anguish in one breath, marrying an unflinching eye to a rare formal assurance. As austerity pushes the margins of each page, in poem after poem, the setting shifts, the characters assume different names, yet every moment interlocks to expose the grime of living in the city.

Yet GRIME is also a story of triumph and resiliency in the face of insurmountable odds, an assertion of the power of poetry in wrestling with grief, addiction, and calamity. It seeks moments of healing based on interpersonal connection and faith. GRIME is a poetics of survival and defiance.

Reviews

Praise for Thea Matthews' GRIME:

"Thea Matthews does something almost no one is doing any moreshe writes dramatic monologues; she inhabits othersmurderers, racist cops, sad victims of the same. And she's great at it. And she inhabits herself as if from the outside, writing dispassionate and harrowing reports from addiction, from the ravages of Reaganomics, from the grimy San Francisco streets. But despite the grim grime, these are the poems of someone who made it, and they're not sensational, they're not salacious; they're lyrical and shapely and grime has never sounded so beautiful."Matthew Rohrer, author of Army of Giants

Praise for Thea Williams:

"a writer of urgency and authentic concern."Jericho Brown, author of The Tradition

"This is true literary witchcraft."Michelle Tea, author of Valencia

"Thea Matthews's poems excavate and explore family traumas and relationships. Voice and silence deliver deep beauty and urgency. This is a language of flesh, blood, soil, sorrow, and ultimately healing." Maw Shein Win, author of Percussing the Thinking Jar

"These poems are crucial for our times." MK Chavez, author of Dear Animal

"Thea Matthews is a poetic herbalist, using flowers to create healing. This work is egalitarian, touching on blooms of all sorts: indigenous, imported, bolted, and cultivated. You will feel these poems in the root of your jaw, in your foot arches. Matthews is an experienced poet with a deft hand and an honest heart. These words languidly stretch, snap like a lock blade, they drape and twine and reach. Read this work and be changed."Kim Shuck, author of Deer Trails

Author Bio

THEA MATTHEWS is a poet of African and Indigenous Mexican descent originally from San Francisco, CA. She holds an MFA in poetry from New York University and a BA in sociology from UC Berkeley. Her poetry has appeared in the Obsidian Lit & Arts in the African Diaspora, The Massachusetts Review, Alta Journal, The New Republic, and others. Her first book, Unearth [The Flowers] (Red Light Lit Press), was chosen for Kirkus Reviews' Best Indie Poetry of 2020. In 2023, she was poet in residence at the Museum of African Diaspora, and programming curator at UC Berkeley's Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive. She teaches creative writing, is an editor, and lives in Brooklyn, NY.